Mao Tse-Tung (Zedong) and the Chinese Civil War

After Mao had fled he began to rebuild the Chinese Communist party (CCP) in Shanghai. He was inspired by the ideas of Lenin, who had successfully achieved a revolution in Russia. He too believed that it was important to concentrate on the countryside rather than the urban areas to create a revolutionary elite. Mao built his party on peasantry because he had no urban workers to deal with. Mao wanted a pure form of Communism and some of his ideas to achieve this was The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Mao gained power after the Japanese invasion of manchuria because Chiang fought to hard trying to get rid of the CCP when instead he should have tried harder to get rid of the Japanese. Chiang lost control of the coastal regions and most of the major cities to Japan. In an effort to beat the Japanese he agreed to collaborate with Mao and his communist armies. This made Mao look like a hero and as soon as the Japanese surrendered Mao and his communist forces began a war on the kuomintang.

Summary of the Civil War

This war lasted from 1947 to 1949. Mao and the Communist Party gradually gained control of the country. Chaing and the nationalists eventually lost and fled to the Island of Formosa (Taiwan) and set up Nationalist China and on the 1st of October, 1949 Mao announced the establishment of the newly communist Peoples Republic of China